Main Junction: SPINNING YARNS - the Tell Us A Story thread (31st October - 27th November)

@RenThing: I thought I had responded to this earlier, but I guess I didn't. It was an apartment I checked out a couple weeks ago for a potential roommate thing, but the place just smelled too much for me. I'd say the guy was a sort of hippy.

My friend was on her way to a job interview. She was on the train, and a man was staring at her. He was a younger guy, but not well groomed, and probably homeless. She tried to ignore the man and look out the window. After a few moments, she saw movement in the window's reflection.

The man who had been staring at her was masturbating furiously. He had everything out, so there was absolutely no way anyone could mistake it as anything else. While she started to cry, he continued to stare. And fwap.

My friend got off the train as soon as she could. She called her mom, bawling. She told her, after getting off the train, "I just knew I needed to get off. And so did he."

Once she got to her job interview, half an hour late because she had to catch the next train, she told her interviewer what had happened. The woman conducting interviews said she would be willing to do a personal interview since she'd missed the group one. Trying to make the best of the situation, my friend said that would be good, she was better one on one anyway. The interviewer then said that was too bad because they were, "more of a team environment."

It really does sound too ridiculous to be true, but as she so aptly put it, you just can't make this shit up. Also, this is only one of her stories of men masturbating at her on the train. I haven't heard the other in all it's detail, but apparently he was wearing overalls and at least kept the action inside them.

I'm illustrating this tale for my letterpress final. I'll give her a copy of the little book when I'm done, naturally.

In my life one person was wanking at me on the bus and I just shouted "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" and got really loud and angry until he started getting embarrassed and the driver came and actually threw him off the bus.

Maybe these guys had been trapped out in a desert for a month, hands too dry and sandy to have a wank. Maybe they had just gotten back to civilization and were on their way home when someone offered them some hand lotion. Maybe, after all that time, and all their hardship, they just had to wank so bad that they couldn't help themselves.

Among the gang who used to hang out on the train home was a guy named Mark. He was the son of an eccentric Anglican minister who constantly embarrassed him while we were at primary school together by turning up out of the blue with snakes and lizards he'd discovered while tending to his bee hives out in the state forest to "show the kids". Given this background, and the fact that he was now attending a staunchly Catholic high school, Mark was bit of a troublemaker.

This came to a head one day on the train home. He'd spent much of the journey muttering and conspiring with Meggsy and another one of the rougher kids, and as the train approached the Guildford level crossing they took up position at the carriage doors.

At this point Perth's railways were still using big, old, silver sided railway carriages pulled by diesel belching monsters dating from the late 60's. In addition to other interesting features - such as seatbacks that could be pulled back and forwards to customise the direction the seats were facing - these carriages had doors that could - if you were strong enough - be pulled open while the train was in motion. As the train roared into the crossing Meggsy and his assistant did just this, and Mark dropped his trousers, stuck his pale white arse out the door and waggled it back and forth at the motorists waiting to cross.

The next day there was quite a dark atmosphere at the school. Apparently some other passengers had recognised Mark's uniform and made a call. I don't know if the incident was ever tracked back to Mark, but we were informed in no uncertain terms that all we train students were being watched :)

I have many tales of public transport, including the old man in a black ballet dress who is commonly seen muttering to himself on a particular bus line near my suburb, the bus driver who kindly elucidated the difference between crack and coca for my fourteenyearold friends, and that one time I was trapped on an Express with a woman intoning "Jesus loves his children it is not too late the loaves and fishes Jesus made the fishes it is not too late for his children to come back to him I am a handmaiden of the Lord" to her captive audience in a creepy monotone for twenty minutes.

The one I'm going to tell here is a classic tale of Getting Lost As Fuck which is so typical of my life. I was fifteen and it was my first time going somewhere on a train all on my own. Somewhere was my Work Experience placement, at a small TV channel based in Chatswood.

Now, Chatswood Station and surrounds were at that time, unbeknownst to me, undergoing a spot of renovation, by which I mean complete reconstruction. This will explain some but not all of the bizarre instructions that the Sydney Transport route-mapping website gave me. I was meant to catch a bus from the station. The map the website gave me took me on a grand round-trip all the way around said station, and then told me to catch a bus from Dalton Street.

One problem: Dalton Street wasn’t there. The two streets marked to either side of it on the map were there. I walked between them about forty times, but Dalton Street failed to materialise. Instead, there were some warehouses and a parking lot (since demolished to make way for a shopping centre.)

After picking a street going in the right direction at random, asking about ten people for directions, all of whom told me they didn’t live here either, and having a minor nervous breakdown, I called my dad. He looked up Chatswood in an old-fashioned street directory and informed me that absolutely no street called Dalton existed in the suburb at all whatsoever. I was trying to catch a bus from an imaginary street.

Here's a brief of selection of some of my choice public transport moments:

- I once saw a woman standing in the middle of a moving train carriage, giving herself a haircut.

- A drunk pair of ex-cons on a crowded friday night football train (full of families) were having a touching conversation and one expressed his love of the other by loudly proclaiming "I would kill every cunt on this train for you mate!"

- An alcoholic sitting next to me on a bus in Mongolia tried to steal my wallet. Twice. After being slapped away the first time.

- I was waiting for a tram late one night, sitting in the little shelter at the tram stop. The tram arrives and the doors open right in front of me. Two chromers (paint sniffers) get of and stand right in front of me, blocking my way out of the shelter. They stood there staring into space for at least 10 seconds. I sat perfectly still the entire time, thinking of ways to not get stabbed. Eventually, they simply staggered off, having most likely not even noticed me.

- A couple of guys heading home from a metal gig noticed me drawing and wanted to look at my sketchbook, which I obligingly gave them. They liked what they saw and said I should draw dirty cartoons for men's magazines. Which was nice.

- I once had my butt groped while waiting at a crowded bus station in Jakarta. It was too crowded for me to do anything about it and the hand just kind of rested there for several minutes. I think it was an old lady, but couldn't turn my head far enough to be sure. Most prolonged and awkward butt groping ever.